Beautiful and Mysterious Grottos.
Grotto
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grotto
A grotto (Italian 'grotta' and French 'grotte') is any type of natural or artificial cave
that is associated with modern, historic, or prehistoric use by humans.
When it is not an artificial garden feature, a grotto is often a small cave near water
and often flooded or liable to flood at high tide.
The picturesque Grotta Azzurra at Capri and the grotto of the villa of Tiberius in the Bay of Naples
are outstanding natural seashore grottoes.
In modern times, many people purchase artificial grottos for ornamental and devotional purposes,
and in outdoor gardens.
The well-known apparitions of Our Lady of Lourdes to Bernadette Soubirous took place in a grotto.
Numerous garden shrines are modeled after these apparitions,
and can commonly be found displayed in churches and gardens.
Mantic springs that issued from grottoes were a feature of Apollo's oracles at Delphi, Corinth, and Clarus.
The new-built Hellenistic city of Rhodes was provided with rock-cut artificial grottos with "naturalistic" features.
At the great Roman sanctuary of Praeneste south of Rome,
the oldest portion of the primitive sanctuary was situated on the next-to-lowest terrace,
in a grotto in the natural rock where there was a spring that developed into a well.
Such a sacred spring had its native nymph, who might be honored in a grotto-like nymphaeum,
where the watery element was never far to seek.
Tiberius filled his grotto with sculptures to recreate a mythological setting,
perhaps Polyphemus' cave in the Odyssey.
The numinous quality of the grotto is still more ancient, of course:
in a grotto near Knossos in Crete,
Eileithyia had been venerated even before Minoan palace-building,
and farther back in time the immanence of the divine
in a grotto is an aspect of the sacred caves of Lascaux.
The word comes from Italian grotta, Vulgar Latin grupta, Latin crypta, (a crypt).
It is related by a historical accident to the word grotesque in the following way: in the late 15th century,
Romans unearthed by accident Nero's Domus Aurea on the Palatine Hill,
a series of rooms underground (as they had become over time),
that were decorated in designs of garlands, slender architectural framework, foliations, and animals.
The Romans who found them thought them very strange,
a sentiment enhanced by their 'underworld' source.
Because of the situation in which they were discovered,
this form of decoration was given the name grottesche or grotesque.
A Marian grotto in Bischofferode (Germany)
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...e_Grotte01.jpg
Our Lady of Mount Carmel Grotto, built by Italian Americans, Staten Island, near New York, US
http://www.walkingoffthebigapple.com...r-lady-of.html
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Eoj7o3HOtY...l+Grotto+2.jpg
North East Portland, US
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_r4Klv8u2tg...rotto+cave.JPG
